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‘Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription’ says HP CEO gunning for 2024’s Worst Person of the Year award | Not satisfied with merely bricking printers, HP now wants to own them al…::It was only the other day we reported how HP has been slapped with a lawsuit in response to measures that disable its printers when fitted with a third-party ink cartridge. Now the company’s CEO,
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Got it. Not to buy hp printer.
This is why for the one or two times I need to print something a year I just go to the library and pay them $0.10 a page to print something out.
I bought a refurbished laser printer at a garage sale for $30 8 years ago. Still printing off the original toner
My printing has become so incredibly rare that even paying $0.50 per page st a ups/fed ex store is a better deal than having a printer. I’m not even sure the printer my wife insists on keeping is compatible with windows 11, which is basically all our PCs now.
Because of a single printer manufacturer?
Because of basically ALL printer manufacturers. I know people like Brother printers, generally, but why pay something like $60-100 for a printer when you only need to use one a few times a year?
For me the cost savings are pretty huge.
As little as I print, it would be worth it to me to adapt my 3d printer to function as a plotter.
The big difference is convenience. I’ve got an inexpensive Brother laser printer. It is probably 12 years old now and is as good as the day I bought it. I’ve only replaced the toner cartridge once or twice. I set it up on my home server so it’s available on all of our family devices (well, not the phones). When the kids wake up in the morning and suddenly realize they have to print off their homework for school, it’s no problem at all.
At least in the Netherlands, there’s a bunch of places you can print including your own school for free.
I go out of my way to eliminate paper wherever possible, so I would rather spend $100 to be able to do something digitally than $50 for a printer.
So are there instructions out there to build your own printer with, say, a Raspberry Pi or a suitable equivalent?
A printer not so much, but I’ve seen multiple plotter projects. Basically same tech as a 3d printer with a pen instead of print head.
Someone needs to build a FOSS printer then.
Why isn’t there any competition in the printer space except for Brother? Are printers really that hard to make?
Epson?
Wow, I’ve never heard of them.
Well their Ecotank printers are pretty popular and in every Walmart.
I have an ET-8550 that we bought for printing family photos to scrapbook. It eats ink from bottles instead of cartridges and is happily printing anything I can give it for 2 years now. I print 5-10 coloured pages every 1–2 weeks for a hobby, plus two full photo albums came out of it, and we’re still on the first set of ink bottles.
I don’t need any wonky software either, it’s on the WLAN and Windows just automatically notices it, installs drivers and prints from the OS prompt. Maybe my better half uses their software for the photo printing, IDK.
Got one (WF-2810) at our favorite online retailer monopoly and am pretty happy. The software is ugly and in some places unintuitive but works well, and it allows off-brand inks but “warns” you about them. It also prints relatively slowly (compared to printers of other people) but it really isn’t bad and I’ve had the current cartridges in for the past two years and they still work perfectly after a quick (automatic) refresh. The scanner is ridiculously slow though - I don’t mind but I can imagine it annoying some.
Can recommend if you don’t print a lot or something!
I’m pretty sure your scanner is scanning at a ridiculously high DPI or something, had this problem with some Epsons and it could be fixed in the software, there are two softwares too, one is scan smart and one is scan 2
Ohhh, really interesting! I’ll check that out, thank you very much!
This. Ecotank printers are great and even let you print non-standard inks like photo-resist.
What are you guys printing?
Crafts projects, often papercraft, handouts for presentations, custom stickers, often shipping labels, etc
I’m really surprised that someone didn’t jump into this space to basically make “the final printer you’ll ever want to buy for home/office use”.
Sell the printer to make a small profit, support refillable ink, and you’ll basically capture 90% of the market. It’s not a billion dollar idea, but for a small company it could make millions, even as a Kickstarter type thing between some hardware and device software folks.
Canon? I have one and it was supposedly the cheapest per page in the long run.
cannon and brother are both decent printer companies
Apparently it took so much time and effort to make high DPI print nozzles that it’s much more attractive for a company to go and make a 3d printer rather than battle it out in a dying market that’s remained a stable distribution of HP, Brother and Epson (and partially Canon).
The problem is profit.
They’re selling you the printers at a pretty substantial loss and are making their money back on the consumables.
In a market where people aren’t printing very much this turns out to be a lousy business plan.
School’s going full digital and businesses going work from home has pushed everyone to stop using paper for everything.
To compete with the current printer manufacturers you’d need to be able to make a printer for about the same price, which means they too would have to make their money back on consumables but the money just isn’t there.
I honestly think this is probably the beginning of the end for HP’s line of consumer printers. It could also possibly be the end of their line of commercial multifunction printers. They’re going to have to give up and walk away from those sectors. If it turns out you don’t need to print for school and you don’t need to put for work and you don’t need to print passes for events, what are we printing for at this point to sign a document and send it back? The market’s drying up and honestly no one new wants in
Canon, Epson, Xerox?
Lexmark
The moral of the story is don’t buy HP anything. Already trying to replace our large format latex printer from HP over this. Fuck that guy.
No where in there was anything about what the consumer wants or needs. Just theirs
Their cheap. HP lowest end printers were always cheaper then the ink. Customers buy the wireless ink with a subscription and think it’s a convenience. It’s a scam but it’s a scam that works.
Basically now that everyone is poor this is how tech companies will address customer needs: low barrier for every and a subscription.
That CEO doesn’t even make top 1000 for worst person, that’s just naïve to think he ranks up there with Warlords, Dictators, Winnie the Pooh, and the Sackler Family.
There’s pkenty of room in the ocean to drown them all, and we can reuse the plank.
And since the CEO said this I will literally never buy an HP product again period
They also just have famously shoddy build quality, with everything they make.
Very happy with my Brother laser printer so far. It just works. Hasn’t held my prints hostage for any online ink subscription renewals… yet…
I haven’t purchased a new HP product since my Pavilion in 1998. I own an HP mini PC, but that was second hand. I’ll never ever ever buy any of their products ever again.
There are a LOT of such products. I don’t touch Sony anything because of the root kit scandal, and their consecutive legal mishaps, and I don’t touch ASUS after their lead designers left the company to be taken over by Wall Street, and et cetera. There’s becoming fewer honest alternatives to choose from all around. Is this an effect of capitalism, do you think? Could they be correlated somehow?
Part of it is an effect of capitalism. What we’re seeing across the tech space is exactly what has happened to retail, airlines, automotive, and even utilities… a company is doing well enough, but the investors want more return for basically doing nothing. Then there’s a hostile takeover or shareholder revolt, they install a board that is more compliant with value extraction at any cost to customers and/or their own workers, and presto! You’ve enshitifacated a company!
Shareholders (at least the big ones) don’t care about worker safety or customer satisfaction… this is what happened to Sears. The CEO gutted the company and then took a golden parachute away from the dumpster fire he created.
Obligatory Brother Laser Printer comment.
I looked into these the other day as my canon inkjet is on its last legs, but it seems any brother laser printer with a comparable featureset now has its own subscription model, and I could be wrong but this is how it seems to work based on my research:
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You automatically get a trial subscription with the toner you get in these printer models (not sure, I hope it’s opt-in)
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If you don’t continue the subscription after the trial, the toner cartridges lock and there’s no way to continue using them, even if you renew your subscription later. You have to pay for new toner cartridges.
I bought an Epson ink tank printer because I was so done with cartridges. I’m quite happy with it so far. Always works, never saw any prompts for me to make accounts or install bullcrap software.
If you own a Brother subscription, you can also get coffee packets, and fresh sock subscription as a service! To your door!
With how popular they’ve been for years, I’d be honestly surprised if they hadn’t enshittified. Reddit got a hard on for them like ten years ago.
You know how this happens right? Old mid man gets fired, new mid man gets hired- now, how for the new mid man to qualify their own existence? Change something. Improvement! Something to show the boss. But what happens when the product is already solid, when any change made to it worsens its functions? How do you improve a fork? You can’t, so instead you start adding shit to it, like better grip, sharper teeth, whatever, and the final product evolves gradually into a monster that is at the same time fork, printer, thermostat, and toilet paper dispenser.
The logical procession and ultimate conclusion of capitalism is this.
In fairness, mine is probably even older than that. I think they still sell the basic models. HL-L2305W?
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And Canon laser brinter!
And Epson Ecotank
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Obligatory “no step brother, that is not where letter sized papers are supposed to go”
Well it’s the long term objective of everyone else to put HP out of business.
If possible we should take the signs off their buildings and turn them into works of modern art. We’ll let IT departments the world over do the project.
I propose setting fire to barricades of trash and car tires at strategic positions around every major city. I have some other ideas too, PM me.
I like the energy but let’s refrain from committing felonies?
But then there’s nothing left!!
Sure there is we can help them with a viral marketing campaign. Just imagine an HP sign with a baseball bat stuck in on some random street corner. It’s art!
Eat the beast from the outside? I like how you think.
Please proceed, governor.
My long term objective is to never print a document in my life.
I just got a brother laser printer.
If you have to print, that’s probably the best option. I’m just happier without any of this.
You should return it
?
There’s no problems with it, I’ve had it for like 8 years. I ran out of toner last year and replaced the cartridge for like $40.
Oh I interpreted “just got” as you just bought one
I’m only joking though, I just have personal trauma with printers and refuse to own one
I should be less lazy when typing on mobile lol
Yeah, I don’t know where the person you replied to is coming from. I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Brother laser printers for a long time now. I know it’s become cliche to say positive things about them, but man, they are so much better than garbage HP inkjets (or really almost any inkjet).
If all printer companies somehow move into the subscription space then I guess I will be going to somewhere like FedEx-Kinkos about once a month for when I need to print something.
It’s in the spirit of never printing anything for the rest of your life, like how thread OP meant. The printer seems to be highly recommended, but you’d still be spending money on printing.
Which is why all HP brand printers get filtered out of my search results when looking for a new printer. Won’t even consider buying one at any price.
I got a cold call from a VAR that deals with HP servers. And I’m like no thank you, I won’t work with HP. They asked why and I told them straight up their anti consumer practices.
I don’t own a printer because the cost to constantly refill cartrages feels like a subscription already. I just go to the UPS store for the 3 times a year I actually need to print something, on a for-realsies printer that someone else maintains. usually costs less than a dollar every time I go.
Staples by my house has my printing business. Maybe 20 pages a year?
I print whole books from the printer at work.
I work at a Starbucks.
Why does Starbucks have a printer?
Because there are administrative tasks to be done in the back office.
Yeah they print us all the time in the back office.
